I start each day reading. Early. In the dark. In the quiet dark. I eschew light like a vampire and sound like a black ninja. I read from my phone with the screen set to its darkest setting, my robe wrapped tight, my Tom Brady fluffy slippers keeping the tootsies warm, and my beanie hat pulled down as far over my face as will still allow for deciphering letters and any necessary slow navigation. Because my right eye does not usually open for a significant amount of time after I wake, and because I’m looking through one eye through my beanie hat in the dark, any navigation is slow navigation. I have the coffee process memorized so it does not require light, sight, or sound.
Or talking. Mornings are not for communicating. Mornings are for not communicating unless you’re a songbird or rooster. All other nonsense can wait.
If I must communicate (like if the house is on fire and I need to notify Rachel), I whisper.
It is in this fashion that I also descend in the elevator to the ground floor after reading and traverse the dark parking lot enroute the hot tub for my dark quiet morning soak. Those stories are for another post.
Lately it seems it’s getting harder to find anything worth reading. So much rubbish out there. I try to stay away from most things political, because all politics is all politics, regardless of the election cycle or year or person or issue. I vote; and I also believe in more do less talk. I steer away from things that are cynical. My day will hold sufficient challenges. E-books are great, and I’m still picking through Tribe of Mentors.
Many of the other headlines in my several feeds, which I thought I had meticulously crafted, are assumptive; assuming a premise, usually unstated, that I am apparently expected to assent to prior to reading: Why Eating Healthy is Ruining Your Sex Life or
Why You’re So Unhappy.
Huh? Foryourinformation my sex life is robust and I run pretty damn happy. Even the articles that I do wander into have the meat of the information so far down the page that I become disinterested soon after clicking. Get. To. The. Point.
And one errant feed click and I’m off the res for good.
I’m taking a re-certification course for work. It’s the last of three that will earn me the six credits I need to carry me for another five years. The courses are book studies; informal and self paced, which I love, and they have introduced me to readings that I would not have otherwise picked up. It’s provided some limited but quality input.
The most recent course asked me to list three to five words that I thought were my core values. No sentences; the values were to be distilled to one word each. That was fun. And hard. I was surprised by what I came up with. But that’s good fodder for another future blog as well.
An offshoot of distilling those core values was a desire and habit to start jotting down life-thoughts; life-axioms, at least for me. They come to me in the morning, as I’m reading, or sometimes after a certain situation from which I think I’ve extrapolated a truth (Ok and also after my first good martini). I don’t hold these truths to be anything that would interest a populace. They are my truths, but you’re reading the blog, so see what you think. Take no offense and mount no counter. If we’re ever together, I’d love the chance to share a drink and pull them apart with you:
-There are things that will happen today. Your button will get pushed. Be a reflective practitioner. Be really good at what you do, regardless of how someone might try to knock you off course.
-Start early each day by creating a fantasy list of what you’d like to celebrate accomplishing when you sit down to enjoy your end-of-day martini. Then make it a little more realistic, with a few extras tossed in. Call it My Martini List. Look forward to the end of day because of how good you’ll feel and how good that first sip will be. Sip it slowly, and tell someone how good it is.
-Mostly, taking the high road means being quiet. Measure your words. You’ll know when it’s time to speak because you’ll become calm.
-It’s hard to punch someone who’s trying to shake your hand.
-It’s ok to be unsure. It’s ok to tell someone you’re unsure. It’s not a weakness because you know you’re already making a plan to get the right answer and you’ll have it soon.
-It’s work. It’s ok to not love every day. That’d just be weird and would make you annoying (And you’d be in desperate need of a life).
-You’ll never regret what you don’t say. Not really. Despite the fictional applause you hear in the shower as you reinvent both sides of the conversation and emerge amazingly victorious, no one is taught a lesson during those moments. Silence is hauntingly powerful.
-Everyone gets to live their time in this realm as they choose. I didn’t make the rules, God did. When their choices impact you, choose to live your life in this realm as you choose.
-If you’re quiet, people will tell you a lot of stuff. If you ask the right questions, people will tell you everything.
-It’s easy to compliment people in genuine ways.
-Being cynical and being lazy is the same thing.
-Know your long game and let your short game loosen up. You’ll be happier.
-If you’re talking more than other people in the group, restrict yourself to only questions for an hour. There’s a reason why people hate work conferences.
-Listen to people without adding your fat thumb to the scale of shared experiences. If they want to know, they’ll ask. Keeping up is annoying.
-Happiness is not a schedule-free life. Happiness is the freedom to create your own schedule.
-When you build story in your head about something that was said, lean heavily towards how awfully most people communicate.
So there it is. Just some things that came to me over the last month or so. If you’re reading, hopefully you find them somewhat more useful than Why Intelligent People are Miserable.
Middle Age Mark 